Читать книгу La Gaviota - Fernán Caballero - Страница 5

Table of Contents

THE grandma and the brother Gabriel took the best care of the invalid; but they could not agree upon the method which should be adopted to cure him.

Maria, without having read Brown, recommended substantial soups, comforts, and tonics, because she conceived that Stein was debilitated and worn out.

Brother Gabriel, without ever having heard the name of Broussais pronounced, pleaded for refreshments and emollients, because, in his opinion, Stein had a brain fever, the blood heated and the skin hot.

Both were right, and with this double system, which blended the soups of the grandma with the lemonade of brother Gabriel, it happened that Stein recovered his life and his health the same day that the good woman killed the last fowl, and the brother divested the lemon-trees of their last fruit.

“Brother Gabriel,” said the grandma, “to which State corps do you think our invalid belongs? Is he military?”

“He must be military,” replied brother Gabriel, who, except in medical or horticultural discussions, had the habit of regarding the good woman as an oracle, and to be guided wholly by her opinion.

“If he were military,” continued the old woman, shaking her head, “he would be armed, and he is not armed. I found only a flute in his pocket. Then he is not military.”

“He cannot be military,” replied brother Gabriel.

“If he were a contrabandist?”

“It is possible he is a contrabandist,” said the good brother Gabriel.

“But no,” replied the old woman, “for to be a contrabandist, he should wear stuffs or jewelry, and he has nothing of these.”

“That is true, he cannot be a contrabandist,” affirmed brother Gabriel.

“See what are the titles of his books. Perhaps by that means we can discover what he is.”

The brother rose, took his horn spectacles, placed them on his nose, and the package of books in his hands, and approached the window which looked out on the grand court. His inspection of the books lasted a long time.

“Brother Gabriel,” asked the old woman, “have you forgotten to know how to read?”

“No—but I do not know these characters; I believe it is Hebrew.”

“Hebrew! Holy Virgin of Heaven, can he be a Jew?”

At that moment, Stein, awaking from a long lethargy, addressed him, and said in German:

“Mein Gott, wo bin ich? My God, where am I?”

The old woman sprang with one bound to the middle of the chamber; brother Gabriel let fall the books, and remained petrified after opening his eyes as large as his spectacles.

“In what language have you spoken?” she demanded.

“It must be Hebrew, like these books,” answered brother Gabriel. “Perhaps he is a Jew, as you said, good Maria.”

“God help us!” she cried. “But no, if he were a Jew, would we not have seen it on his back when we undressed him?”

“Good Maria,” replied the brother, “the holy father said that this belief which attributes to a Jew a tail at his back is nonsense, a piece of bad wit, and that the Jews laugh at it.”

“Brother Gabriel,” replied the good Mama Maria, “since this holy constitution, all is changed, all is metamorphosed. This clique, who govern to-day in place of the king, wish that nothing should remain of what formerly existed; it is for that they no longer permit the Jews to wear tails on their backs, although they always before carried them, as does the devil. If the holy father said to the contrary it is because it is obligatory, as they are obliged to say at Mass, ‘Constitutional king.’ ”

“That may be so,” said the monk.

“He is not a Jew,” pursued the old woman; “rather is he a Turk or a Moor, who has been shipwrecked on our coast.”

“A pirate of Morocco,” replied the good brother, “it may be.”

“But then he would wear a turban and yellow slippers, like the Moor I have seen thirty years ago, when I was in Cadiz. They called him the Moor Seylan. How handsome he was! But for me his beauty was nothing: he was not a Christian. After all, be he Jew or Moor let us relieve him.”

“Assist him, Jew or Christian,” repeated the brother. And they both approached the bed.

Stein had raised himself up in a sitting position, and regarded with astonishment all the objects by which he was surrounded.

“He does not understand what we say to him,” said the good Maria. “Let us try, nevertheless.”

“Let us try,” added Gabriel.

In Spain, the common people believe that the best way to make themselves understood is to speak very loud. Maria and Gabriel, with this conviction, cried out both together: “Will you have some soup?” said Maria. “Will you have some lemonade?” said the brother.

Stein, whose ideas became clearer little by little, asked in Spanish:

“Where am I? who are you?”

“He,” replied the old woman, “is brother Gabriel; I am grandma Maria, and we are both at your orders.”

“Ah!” said Stein, “from whom do you take your names? The holy archangel and the holy Virgin, guardians of the sick and consolers of the afflicted, will recompense you for your good action.”

“He speaks Spanish!” cried Maria with emotion; “and he is a Christian! and he knows the litanies!”

In her access of joy, she approached Stein, pressed him in her arms and bravely kissed his forehead.

“Decidedly, who are you?” she said, after having made him take a bowl of soup. “How, ill and dying, have you reached this depopulated village?”

“I am called Stein, and I am a surgeon. I was in the war at Navarre. I came by Estremadura to seek a port whence I could embark for Cadiz, and then regain Germany, my country. I lost myself in my route: I made a thousand detours and finished by arriving here, worn out by fatigue and ready to give up the ghost.”

“You see,” said Maria to brother Gabriel, “that his books are not in the Hebrew language, but in the language of surgeons.”

“That’s true,” repeated brother Gabriel.

“And which party do you belong to?” asked the old woman. “Don Carlos, or the other?”

“I serve in the troops of the Queen,” replied Stein.

Maria turned towards her companion, and with an expressive gesture, said in a low voice:

“He is not with the good.”

“He was not with the good,” repeated brother Gabriel, in bowing his head.

“But where am I?” again demanded Stein.

“You are,” replied the old woman, “in a convent which is no longer a convent. It is a body without a soul. There remain but the walls, the white cross, and brother Gabriel. The others have taken away all the rest. When there was nothing more to take, some gentlemen whom they call the public credit searched for a good man to guard the convent—that is to say, its carcass. They heard my son spoken of, and we came and established ourselves here, where I live with my son, the only one who would remain. When we entered into the convent, the fathers went away. Some retired to America or rejoined the missions in China; some returned to their families; some demanded their subsistence or work, or had recourse to alms. We have with us a monk, borne down by age and grief, who, seated on the steps of the white cross, weeps sometimes for the absent brethren, sometimes for the convent which they have abandoned. ‘Will not your Reverence come here,’ a child but lately attached to the services of the chapel said to him. ‘Where would you that I go?’ he replied. ‘I will never go away from these walls, where I was, poor and an orphan, received by the good fathers. I know nobody in the world, and know nothing but how to take care of the garden of the convent. Where shall I go? What shall I do? I can live only here.’ ‘Then remain with us.’ ‘Well said, mother,’ replied my son; ‘we are seven seated at the same table; we will be eight, and, as the proverb says, We will eat more, and we will eat less.’ ”

“Thanks to this act of charity,” said Gabriel, “I remain here, I take charge of the garden; but since they have sold the large pump, I do not know how to water a foot of ground; the orange and lemon trees dry up under my feet.”

“Brother Gabriel,” continued the grandma, “will not quit these walls to which he is attached like the ivy; he also says, ‘Very well, there remain but the walls. The barbarians! They have proved this maxim: Destroy the nest, the birds will never come back again.’ ”

“Notwithstanding,” hazarded Stein, “I have heard said there are too many convents in Spain.”

Maria fixed her black sparkling eyes on the German, and said to herself in an undertone:

“Were our first suspicions well founded?”